The ability to autonomously repair inflicted damage, such as through self-healing, is an important survival feature of living creatures. Animal muscle is a biomaterial that has long fascinated the scientific world: it is strong, elastic and able to undergo self-healing when wounded. Synthetic polymers have been designed to self-heal by encapsulating healing agents or incorporating dynamic bonds. However, most of these approaches involve the input of energy (either heat or light) or the assistance of a liquid monomer and a catalyst, solvents or plasticizers. Autonomous self-healing rubbers, which are typically based on moisture-sensitive hydrogen bonding, can lack stability against moisture. An improved self-healing chemistry that will afford ambient temperature, autonomous, repeatable self-healing ability, along with extended environmental stability, is highly desirable.
It is against this background that a need arose to develop the self-healing polymers of embodiments of this disclosure.